The Ethics of Cryptocurrency: The Good, the Bad, Opportunities, and Vulnerabilities

Ethics asks questions about better and worse, and about opportunities and vulnerabilities. Ethics explores intentions, duties, and expectations. Ethics praises virtue and warns against evil. When ethics looks at socio-technical systems, the technical details and human values become intertwined. Cryptocurrency (and its underlying technology, blockchain data structures) are central to several such socio-technical systems. Cryptocurrency has attracted much attention lately, both positive and negative. In this half hour, we’ll look at some of the technical details essential to cryptocurrency, and at some of the human values that have become intertwined with cryptocurrency. We will also at least mention some of the ethical theories that are being applied to help shed light on ethically significant decisions about cryptocurrency that have been made, and are likely to face us in the near future.

This is a hybrid event. You can join us in person or at ethicalstl.altarlive.com.

Keith W. Miller is UMSL’s Orthwein Professor for Lifelong Learning in the Sciences. He is a member of both the Computer Science Department and the College of Education. His primary research interests include computer ethics, technology and education, and software testing. He partners with the St. Louis Science Center and Girls’ Inc. of St. Louis. Learn more about Keith.